Out of Body in the Lab

Studies Report Inducing Out-of-Body Experience

by Sandra Blakeslee, The New York Times, August 24, 2007

Using virtual-reality goggles, a camera and a stick, scientists have induced out-of-body experiences in healthy people.

A sense of balance

Read Without a Net--Daniel B. Smith's review of Balance: In Search of the Lost Sense by Scott McCredie (Little, Brown & Company)--in The New York Times Book Review, August 19, 2007.

Smith writes, "Balance is a 'multimodal' faculty...perhaps best thought of as the sum total of other senses." He quotes McCredie: "The act of balancing a mass as large as a human body over a base as small as two human feet is exceptionally demanding. It's roughly equivalent to trying to balance a triangular object over one of its points; the natural tendency is for gravity to push it over."